It was midday and the sun beat down hot on the earth, leaving nothing but heat mirages across the small clearing in the forest. Shikamaru and Ino crouched patiently in the coverage of sturdy oak tree staring out at the forest opening that had just been made into a battle arena.
They watched as a young girl ran with determination in the middle of the opening, making quick hand signs before sliding to a stop, dust kicking up around her. Her finger tips grazed the earth at her feet and the ground all around her moistened, becoming a thick mud that extended out rapidly. Her opponent took hurried steps backwards trying his best to avoid the wet earth, but he wasn't fast enough. He sank quickly, made even quicker by his desperate struggle. She released her hand signs and the ground returned to its normal state. The large man was trapped, incased up to his chest in firm earth. The girl didn't hesitate and suddenly she was kneeling behind him with a knife tight to his throat.
"Shouldn't we stop her Shika?" Ino whispered in his ear. He shook his head continuing to stare intently at the battle.
Although the young woman was their target the aggressively large man that was now her victim had attacked first. Shikamaru hadn't learned much from this girl's file so he used this as an opportunity to find her weakness, unfortunately it was the only option.
He watched closely. She wielded a small knife, held tightly in her right hand. The man continued to struggle like some kind of small game stuck in a trap, knowing its fate. She pressed the blade lightly against his neck. One swift motion, left to right, with an upward flick. She was clinical and unfazed by the action. The man slumped forward, still encapsulated in earth. The blood dripping down his body drying quickly in the heat and the air became stagnant with their motionlessness.
'There!' Shikamaru thought, as he saw the target's shoulders relax and her hand slide under her top to grope at her side, coming away with blood on it. She had concealed it so well in battle, but the man had managed to get her.
Sweat glistened on her bare shoulders and he watched as they rose and feel quickly to catch her breath. Now was the time to make a move, Shikamaru thought. She was recovering from the exertion; her chakra was depleted, and she was wounded.
Shikamaru didn't conjure a plan of action quick enough. He saw the girl's head turn hastily in their direction and her body stood to attention again, an action similar to that of the deer in his family's forest back home. She must have had an acute sensitivity to chakra, because theirs had been under complete control to remain hidden. All of a sudden he felt Ino's hand shove their shoulders apart as four kunai flew into the tree they were sheltered in.
This one was going to be very troublesome Shikamaru thought to himself.
"South bound." Ino yelled wasting no time, leaping from the branches and breaking into a run.
Shikamaru quickly followed, shaking his head in frustration as he formed signs for his shadow jutsu. The girl had escaped from view, bolting into the woods on the other side of the clearing. It would have been easier to catch her when he had a clear shot, but he forced his shadows to reach blindly ahead of them as they ran between the trees.
"I've completely lost visuals and she's not exerting chakra to run, so I have nothing to follow." Ino yelled back to Shikamaru as she slowed down.
"Follow the blood." Shikamaru said sprinting past her with his head down searching the ground for the small flecks of red.
They bolted through the woods, the temperature dropping as they moved deeper, following the trail of blood. He knew she was becoming weak. He saw the droplets come more frequently and in greater quantities. She was irritating the wound and exhausting herself further.
"Damn it" Shikamaru growled as he and Ino came to a stop.
The path of blood diverged in three directions. Their target had probably used a clone jutsus and her own blood to create three separate trails in an attempt to escape them. She was definitely cleaver, he would give her that.
Ino stood, staring critically at each path until her head bolted up at a faint noise. It sounded like splashing water.
They both began to run again following the path in the direction of the noise, but slowed abruptly as a small pond came into view. It had trees growing right up to its banks and the canopy shaded it so that the air felt cold and damp around it. They both crouched in the brush nearing the water's edge. Their target was using chakra to stumble across the pond towards a small tributary waterfall. She was weak though, and her chakra was fading as she faltered and slipped, each foot suspending on the surface less and less often. She clumsily disappeared behind the falls.
Ino and Shikamaru looked at each other with mutual understanding. They stepped off the banks, silently letting their feet hit the water before moving across the surface of the pond with ease. Ino trailing Shikamaru closely, coming to a halt at the edge of the falls. He made signs with his hands again and sent his shadows in before them. This time she did not evade his capture, he could feel his shadows wrap around a motionless body.
He still moved with caution, pushing his hand into the falls and finding that there was only a foot of rushing water and then empty space on the other side. He stepped forward, ushering for Ino to do the same. They entered a small cave, lit only by the sun that reflected off the water on the other side of the falls. Their target had collapsed on the edge of the rocks, her hands still clinging to the jagged stone, legs drifting limply in the water, dangerously close to slipping under the current if it wasn't for Shikamaru's shadows holding her in place. As he stepped closer to her, still suspended on the surface, he looked down to find that the clear pond around her was slowly becoming cloudy with red.
He knelt, releasing his shadow jutsu and quickly sliding his hands under her arms as she began to slip down the rocks. He pulled her up from the current resting her in his arms before he found a flat outcropping of stone where set her down. Then nodded for Ino to attend to her.
She came to the girl's side kneeling over her, her hands already glowing blue as she moved the girl's top up revealing a deep gash high on her ribs. Ino pulled a kunai from the pouch on her hip and skillfully cut away the mesh undershirt the girl wore. The blue light from Ino's hands illuminating the wound and shimmered off the wet rocks, creating a sapphire haze in the cave. Shikamaru watched in fascination as Ino worked, her brow furrowed in concentration.
When the blue light finally faded and the cave became dark again Ino leaned over the girl even further making hand signs and bring her finger tips to rest on either side of the girl's face. She finished her mind locking jutsu and gracefully shifted back up into a standing position.
"That will make the trip back to Konoha a little less eventful." She said turning back to Shikamaru with a pleased grin on her face.
"Shikamaru its time." Ino said as she walked into his office, looking very put together for having just spent four days in Fire County's deepest woods. "Do you want to be there for the interrogation?"
"Anything to get away from this troublesome paperwork." He replied standing and grinning at the blonde.
They crossed the Shinobi Complex that contained Konoha's political and protective buildings, going from the one that held the Strategies Unit to the Interrogation and Holding building, a solid windowless black structure, two stories above the ground and five bellow. Ino lead him three floors down, easily passing each check point, as they were both known by all the guards. It was dark and poorly lit on the third floor with heavily locked doors in each labyrinth like hall. Ino eventually stopped at one door and pulled it open revealing a small room with a one-way glass mirror against the wall that looked into a brightly lit room on the opposing side.
Shikamaru stepped in to see the fiery young woman on the other side of the glass. She wore the plain white uniform of a prisoner, her tan skin looking washed out by the harsh lighting of the room and her unruly blonde hair twisting and turning to shade the expression on her face. He stepped up to the window cautiously, as if she could have seen him and watched as one of Ino's colleges entered.
"You're not doing the initial interrogation?" Shikamaru said, turning to Ino with surprise.
"No. You saw how this girl operates. She's not going to just give it all up. You had your turn to observe her, now I get mine." Ino said before focusing her attention back on what was happening on the other side of the glass.
"See, look at that, she's refusing to deflate the room." Ino said gazing at the girl clinically, her head slightly tilted to the right like she did when she was trying to figure someone out. "Tazlo sat down, but she won't. It's a way of creating a imbalance in power. She also hasn't looked at him yet, which is normally a sign of submission, but for her it's probably sign of disregard. I'm definitely going to have fun with this girl."
Shikamaru watched as a smirk crossed Ino's lips, her eyes flickered from the girls unmoving expression down to her hands that were chained in front of her. He could see her drawing conclusions about the most intricate and minute aspects of the girl's body language. Ino was good at reading people, she always had been, even without her mind jutsus. Instead of watching the prisoner Shikamaru surveyed Ino's expressions as a puzzled look made its way across her face.
"Would you like to sit down?"
Shikamaru turned back to watch the proceedings as Tazlo spoke softly to the girl. She made no response, just continued to stare blankly at the table in front of her.
The door in the observation room clicked open, Ino and Shikamaru both stood to attention when familiar blonde walked in.
"What is Tazlo doing in there with her?" Tsunade addressed Ino with a mild frustration.
"Oh." Ino said taring her eyes away from the glass "I wanted to observe her first before I went in. It seems like this one maybe a little tougher than most. I think we need to wear her down before I speak to her." Ino said as she turned from Tsunade back to the glass. "But, I'm going to go ahead and guess she won't give us anything either way so I'll have to use my jutsu eventually."
"Good , good." Tsunade waved distractedly as if she was trying to hurry her words out. "I need a full report on what you find. She's become a very big threat to Konoha in the past few months, really made a name for herself in some of the out-skirting villages. We need to find out who she's working for and who was next on her hit list, all the usual stuff."
Tsunade looked pasted Ino to Shikamaru, giving him a graceful nod before turning to leave.
"Keep up the good work you two, I'm off to finish my rounds."
The door closed behind the woman as quickly as it had opened and both their attention was back to the proceedings in the other room.
"She's unresponsive to Tazlo maybe some kind of problem with authority or just stubbornness." Ino began speaking to herself again.
She seldom had any thoughts that she internalized. Shikamaru had a love hate relationship with this aspect of her personality. It was helpful in situations like this where they both needed to gather intel and she had observational skills that he didn't, but when every little thought she had would poor out of her it became very troublesome.
Ino started to continue on with some analysis when she suddenly stopped. She had seen something before Shikamaru did; a twitch in the girl's stance or a flicker behind her eyes maybe.
The girl had launched herself across the table at Tazlo, and the force of her attack had sent him out of his chair. They were both on the ground, her hands throttling his neck.
Shikamaru was closest to the door so he quickly swung it open making signs with his hands as he moved out into the hallway. Ino followed him and grabbed the handle to the interrogation room waiting for Shikamaru to finish, then the door flew open.
He saw the girl running for an escape as his shadows filled the small chamber. The room was engulfed in blackness for a second before the shadows snapped like a spring trap around the girl restraining her every inch. She screamed in frustration and for the first time Shikamaru saw her piercing blue eyes as they stared at him with an unfiltered rage. It was a paralyzing look and every thought in his head came to a temporary halt. They were the lightest misty white blue and they darkened like a tempest cloud as she screamed at him, not breaking eye contact. It sent a chill down his spine as if he could feel the storm that raged within her.
He quickly pulled himself from the feeling and collected his thoughts, twisting his shadows to move up her body and pinch the pressure point residing at the tender spot between her neck and shoulder. She unwillingly relaxed from her terrifying scream into unconsciousness.
"Tazlo are you okay?" Ino said, coming to the man's side.
"Yeah I'm fine." He replied rubbing at his neck, which was already turning a light purple.
Three guards came in behind Shikamaru, probably having heard the commotion. He lowered the girl to the ground and Ino instructed them to take her back to her cell. Saying something about how the girl really didn't intend to hurt Tazlo, she only wished to escape.
Shikamaru watched as they lifted her from the ground, her soft features looked completely relaxed. It was so dramatically different from the furious face he had just witnessed.
"What the hell was that Ino?" Shikamaru asked when they finally made it to her office.
"It was the pictures." Ino said throwing the girls file down on her desk as she began to pace in circles behind it. "When Tazlo started putting down the pictures of her targets something snapped. She kills like a mercenary, but I have a feeling these hits are more personal. She's trying to be enigmatic, she isn't telling us anything and she's staying closed, but her aggression is getting the best of her. She's probably not used to being trapped like this. It's like caging a wild animal; eventually she'll do or say something that gives her away. We need to wear away at her more and she'll snap again."
"I don't think another snap is what we want Ino." he said remembering the girls penetrating stare.
"No not like that. It's like breaking a wild mustang with girls like this. She's too proud to admit defeat until she's finally broken. The guards told me she's been refusing food and she's refusing to sleep in her cell, and she refused to sit down in the interrogation. When she was addressed with the pictures of her victims she couldn't refuse what she had done, and who they were. We were forcing her to give into something."
"What?"
"Her rage. She has a fire that even she can't contain and it's going to burn her up. Then it will be easy to enter her mind." Ino said with something he could only place as delight.
If there was one thing Ino liked more than talking it was defeating her opponents, in particular female opponents.
"I think she needs a couple days to let this sit. She's starving herself and losing sleep it's only degrading her physical and mental state." Ino said beginning to pace again. "Then I'll interrogate her personally. If I get nothing than I'll be forced to extract it from her. It's as simple as that"
Three days passed and the girl wasn't giving in. The guards said she did nothing but sit on the floor of her cell staring through the bars. Shikamaru saw no other way to get information from her; therefor Ino would have to work her magic.
He made sure to be there during the interrogation, but Ino refused to let him in the room for protection. She said it wasn't part of her strategy. Shikamaru wondered what exactly she was planning because he had a nagging feeling it would not go well.
He watched through the glass as two guards escorted the girl into the room. She looked thinner than he last remembered and there were heavy dark circles under her eyes. She had tight cuffs on each hand; one of the guards attached the chain that connected the two cuffs to a chain that was attached to the middle of the table. They were being more precautious this time. Good.
Ino entered the room, she wore all black except for her green vest that she left unzipped, her hair was pulled back in a high braid. She looked more commanding than usual. Ino moved to stand across from the girl with her back to the glass and Shikamaru watched as the she surveyed Ino, sizing her up, with a controlled look on her face.
"We need a name for our files." Ino finally said as she slowly sat down in front of the girl.
Shikamaru stared in astonishment as the girl used her feet to pull back her own chair and sat down. She was sitting, she was conceding, in a small way, but conceding none the less.
"Mist." She said simply, her voice was smooth and soft and came out like a whisper.
He couldn't quite pin this interaction into a category. It was an outlier to all that he had come to know of this girl. She was proud, stubborn, and full of wrath, she was precise, clinical, and swift, she had an earth affinity and a powerful left pop. She did not speak or sit; she did not surrender or yield. It was a tactic, the girl was intelligent and manipulative and it had to be some kind of ploy.
Shikamaru watched her closely. Her face unmoving as she concentrated on Ino. She sat with her hands in small loose fists on the table. She was showing the mildest symbols of submission. He kept his eyes fixed on her. Something was off.
"Mist." Ino said as she scrawled it at the top of the manila folder "We've been calling you Rogue X all week. It's nice to have a name to put to all these horrible murders."
"Murders…huh." A sinister smile crossed Mist's face. "That's what your nation is calling them?"
"What would you call them?" Ino spoke with a mocking interest.
"Retribution."
"Retribution for what Mist." Ino said flatly.
"For something that was done a very long time ago. Something that your people have chosen to forget." Her voice was as calm as her expression.
"Well, why don't you enlighten me."
"I would love to." She replied with a smile.
It happened quicker than either Ino or Shikamaru could react. Mist's blue eyes flashed to the mirror. Shikamaru could feel her look right at him through the glass as if to taunt him, and then she slammed her fists down hard on the table. Her chair flew back against the wall and she used the wave of energy from her strike to boost herself into an acrobatic flip, landing behind Ino and yanked hard at the chain that attached her to the table, breaking it. She pulled the chain between her cuffs against Ino's neck and they both fell to the floor.
When Shikamaru entered the room he moved with blind fury, storming with rage towards the two girls struggling on the ground. He grabbed at the chain around Ino's delicate neck, it shattered as he squeezed down on it, infusing his hands with chakra. Ino was then able to swing her arms back, pushing Mist away from her.
He charged at the girl quickly before she could get to her feet and made three swift moves; a hit to her wrist, a hit to her inner elbow, and one hard hit to the soft flesh behind her ear. The increasing pain of each blow shocked her nervous system and she blacked out falling with a thud onto the cement floor from which she had just risen.
Shikamaru turned back to Ino who had pushed herself half way up the wall. She was already moving her hand, blue with chakra, over her throat. He relaxed to see that she was okay. The tension in his shoulders subsided some.
"Take her to my room." Ino croaked out in anger.
Shikamaru looked from Ino to the girl and back again.
"Are you sure?"
Ino was in no state to start playing mind games. Her jutsus required concentration and meticulousness. She was to wound-up to probe through someone's mind with precision.
"Do it Shikamaru!" she urged him angrily.
He reluctantly picked the girl up from the floor and headed out into the hall.
Mist, it may have been the wrong time to think it, but the name fit her. Not only did her eyes distinctly remind him of the mist that hung low over fire country in the morning, but she had also been nothing but mysterious and full of danger since they had brought her back. He hoped they would uncover all of her secrets soon because her threat only increased with time. He was starting to think they knew less about her than they did at the beginning of the mission.
Her report had alluded that she was a mercenary, but Ino seemed to think differently. What she was killing for, neither of them had a clue. When it came to Shinobi, what you were willing to take life for was the most important aspect of your being.
Shikamaru was pulled from his thoughts when he came to the door of Ino's personal interrogation room.
He had watched a few of Ino's interrogations and none of them did he ever want to be a part of. Memory extraction seemed, to him, like a very painful process and the more Ino's victims would struggle for control the more pain they would feel.
He entered the high ceilinged room, lit only by a small light that came down in the middle over a reclined chair with menacing straps on it. He laid Mist down on the chair and strapped her wrists and ankles in. He moved to do the full body straps when he saw her staring down at him. Her eyes burrowed into him and he felt an involuntary chill go down his spin.
She didn't speak or struggle. Her face was controlled and he had no inclination as to what she was thinking. At that moment he didn't quite know what he was thinking either. Her gaze was paralyzed.
"Shika. Get away from her." Ino marched into the room, brushing him aside as she grabbed at the last of the straps and tightened them over the girl with tremendous force.
"We are going to have a little lesson in obedience." Ino said staring down at Mist with a look that made most flinch, but she was not fazed. She returned with a challenging look.
Ino formed delicate signs with her hands and he could feel the chakra shift in the room as she moved slowly towards the girl strapped in place.
Shikamaru waited in a frozen stare, bracing himself for the chaos that he sensed would ensue. He waited for Mist to struggle or scream, but when Ino finally place her hands on either side of the girls face , it was Ino that screamed, an animalistic and blood curdling scream .
Once their skin connected it was as if a force attached the two that Ino couldn't pull away from. Shikamaru watched as the girl staring at Ino, her eyes darkened to a stormy grey and for a moment he didn't know what to do.
When he looked back to Ino the pain on her face pulled him back into his body. He bolted into action, moving to pry Ino away, but by the time he had reached her Mist seemed to let go, the force that had connected the two dissipated and the room went quiet. Ino stumbled back and he grasped her shoulders as she fell to her knees panting.
"Wh….what was that." Ino croaked out staring down at her hands.
Shikamaru knelt down in front of her trying to look her in the eyes, but she kept looking at her hands. Her eyes were wide, a look in them he had only seen once before. He felt a moment of fear before his rational brain took over working for him. He needed to get her out of that room. He went to lift her from the ground, but stopped when he heard something.
His head flew up as an eerie chuckle echo against the cement walls. Mist was staring down at Ino with menace in her smile.
"You didn't think you were the only pretty blonde with minds tricks did you?"